


Distress Call

by Camellianswer



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X
Genre: Arctic regions, Axl gets his tongue stuck to a metal pole, Comedy, Ice puns, Irony, Maverick Hunters, Misunderstandings, Original Character - Freeform, Reploid, Revenge, and that's about it, reploids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-04 00:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17888162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camellianswer/pseuds/Camellianswer
Summary: Axl's on his first solo mission for the Maverick Hunters to investigate a mysterious signal coming from an arctic outpost. However, the investigation takes an embarrassing turn...





	Distress Call

      Axl believed himself to be fairly good-natured. He didn’t get mad that often. But today, he was really steaming.

     …actually, considering that he was currently enduring sub-zero temperatures, he wasn’t exactly STEAMING, per se, but that was beside the point.

      It was supposed to be an easy mission. And now here he was, shackled hand and foot to the ground in a most embarrassing position, the frigid temperatures slowly burning his semi-organic skin, not enough core power left to copy-shot a stronger body, and on top of all that he was having a really difficult time getting a com signal out.

     Normally sending out his signal would be a piece of cake. All he had to do was reach his hand up, tap the pad in his aural cone, and start talking. However, right now his hands were encased in ice and forced to the ground and it had been such a long time that he’d called hands-free that he had…forgotten how.

     None of this would have been all that bad if not for what that stupid Maverick had done before he left. Okay so he technically wasn’t Maverick but Axl still thought of him that way, especially in light of this decidedly underhanded revenge he’d inflicted on him.

    The thing was, not only was Axl frozen solid to the ground, but his tongue was stretched unwillingly out, fixed immovably to a steel pipe.

    Which was just wrong.

 

     Rewind by one hour, and you had a perfectly happy Reploid heading out to investigate an arctic outpost where mysterious signals had been detected. Axl had assured X that he could handle this by himself. He needed to clock in a solo mission before he could start jumping ranks. He’d presented such a convincing picture of a perfectly competent and responsible Hunter that X had finally, FINALLY relented.

    Sweetness!

    After riding the teleport as close in as he could get – which, predictably, wasn’t that close at all – Axl crunched through the ice-crusted snowdrifts to the side of the domed building. Being such a warm body in such a cold place, secrecy was hardly possible, so he’d opted for walking over flying so as to save his energy. He paused and probed out mentally into the building and the surrounding area. Inside the building was a framework of firewalls and sensory blocks that stopped his scan in its tracks. There were a few half-finished skeletons of huts across the landscape, stark metal poles frosted with white. His target, Odin Mastodon, was the only one stationed at the outpost currently, and he had to be here somewhere. So far, Axl wasn’t getting any readings on him.

    He did, however, get a lock on the mysterious signal that had sparked an investigation in the first place.

      Axl recorded its pattern. It didn’t make sense to him, but something about its general makeup seemed familiar. At any rate, it probably wasn’t a cause for alarm. No Trojan viral data, no secret communications, not even hacking wifi. Not that there was any wifi to hack around here. Axl gazed up into the sky full of swirling snowflakes and tried again to reconnect to HQ. The arctic and polar regions didn’t have good service at all. Weather had something to do with it, but so did the sheer remoteness of these sparse outposts. Eh, he didn’t need a navigator anyways. All they did was chirp in his ear, yammer-yammer-yammer, nag-nag-nag.

     He’d lost focus again. Proximity sensors only had time for a brief squawk of warning before a huge form loomed behind Axl. He fired his boot jets and lunged into the air, spinning to face the unseen opponent.

     Odin Mastodon stood there, radiating heated annoyance in this frigid cold, and rumbled “And just what are you doing?”

     Axl steadied his flight and responded “I’m Maverick Hunter Axl, Rank A, 17th Unit. I was, uh…” Why was he faltering? “I was sent to investigate you. And uh, this place. The weird signals coming from here.” Maybe Mastodon’s fierce one-eyed glare had something to do with Axl’s short burst of awkwardness. He was feeling more confident now. “As a Maverick Hunter, I’m going to need to take a look around the premises, inside and out. I’d appreciate it if you would—”

     “Do you have a warrant?”

     “Do I have…” Axl broke off. Nobody had said anything about warrants. Those were for human cops. “No. Why?”

    “If you don’t have a warrant…” Mastodon narrowed his good eye. “Then you’re not coming inside.”

     “Uh, sorry, but maybe you didn’t hear me. I’m a MAVERICK HUNTER?” He brushed his hands over his guns warningly. “If you obstruct this investigation, that could get you in a lot of trouble. Maybe get you labeled Maverick. You don’t wanna do that.”

      The arctic Reploid growled. “So, if someone asserts their rights, they’re Maverick? You Hunters make me sick. Now get outta here before you find yourself being hunted.”

      That there sounded like an open challenge. Axl grinned in a decidedly unprofessional manner. He’d been waiting for a challenge. Still, he had to follow protocol, which meant no attacking…yet. “Make it easy on yourself, Mastodon. Just tell me what that signal you’re sending out is.”

      “I choose to remain silent.” He crossed his massive arms and growled again.

     “Saying that isn’t too silent,” he couldn’t resist needling.

    Mastodon snorted with rage. “That’s it, you little punk. You’ve wasted my time, accused me of being Maverick, and who knows what you’ve been doing before I caught you trespassing.” He lowered into a battle stance, his large and probably decorative brown ears stiffening against the wind. “Let’s see if the Hunters taught you anything other than mouthing off to your elders!”

      NOW he could attack.

 

     Odin Mastodon was equipped with liquid nitrogen busters on the outsides of his thick arms, which struck Axl as a little useless in a land where ice was the most common commodity, but Mastodon made good use of the freezing blasters. Also, for a unit of his size, he was surprisingly fast.

      But nobody was as fast as Axl!

      Axl streaked up along the side of the building and dislodged a huge slab of ice that rocketed down like a cement truck toward Mastodon’s head. At the last possible second, Mastodon dashed out of the way, behind the ice. Axl dropped down to get a good shot at the Reploid, but was surprised by an explosion of freezing shards that pushed him head over heels midair. Mastodon had punched the ice slab with such force that it blew up in Axl’s face. He charged through the hole, nitrogen-blasters firing.

     The young Reploid avoided the shots and squeezed off a few well-aimed ones of his own. He was disappointed when Mastodon managed to dodge them. How could he dodge them? Axl gritted his teeth and zoomed at Mastodon, circling him like a vindictive wasp, raining down occasional blasts while trying to get in a good position to copy-shot.

      Mastodon emitted a bestial noise like a bull preparing to charge. He crouched down and the next second was midair, hurtling at Axl with horrifying speed. Then one of those steel tusks hooked his waist and jerked him down to the ground with the ease of a man tossing a doll.

      Axl hit the ground on his back and cried out as something crumpled beneath him. Landing on his back with wings extended was a bad idea. He sure wouldn’t be flying anytime soon. No time to worry about it, though, because Mastodon was charging him again, and it was all Axl could do to stay ahead of the streams of instantly-freezing liquid nitrogen. Mounds of ice from the blasts riddled the landscape like frozen termite nests.

       The arctic Reploid closed with him again, grabbing at his arm. Axl twisted out of the way, but Mastodon got a hold on his wing. The broken one. A sharp tug, a stab of blinding pain, and Axl was free, but feeling suddenly outclassed. One wing stabilizer was kaput, torn in two and crumpled all the way to the base. It hurt like smelt, but Axl could push through it, if he could just get a lock on this guy’s fighting patterns…or better yet, touch him and snatch some weapon data to turn the tables on him.

        Odin Mastodon apparently had no desire to make the fight last any longer than it had to. He dropped back, letting Axl get a few yards ahead, and drew himself up to his full height. Before Axl could wonder what he was doing, the mammoth-themed Reploid opened his mouth and roared a sonic-boom style weapon that ripped up the ground in a direct path to Axl.

        The world seemed to explode, and Axl skidded back, thoroughly disoriented even as he fought against the aural trauma the weapon had inflicted on him. While his gyros were scrambling to get back online, Mastodon flipped him to his back in the center of a half-built hut and shot plumes of liquid nitrogen over his body. Axl was instantly glued to the ice. He jerked his head up, tried to use some remnants of energy to copy-shot himself out of there, but then Mastodon did something completely unexpected. He slammed Axl’s head back onto the ice, jarring him out of copy mode, and wrenched the prototype’s mouth open. Jolts of panic electrified Axl’s already-jangling nerves. What was this guy doing? A torture tactic? Mastodon grabbed Axl’s tongue between two fingers, pulled it roughly forward, and stuck it quite deliberately to the white-frosted surface of a steel pipe lying conveniently nearby.

        For a moment Axl was in shock. This was a maneuver that the training manuals hadn’t talked about. Not that he really read the manuals, I mean, come on, who did that?

       Then, because he was unable to do anything else, he began screaming.

       Mastodon huffed with vengeful satisfaction and smacked a hand on Axl’s back. “Now you stay there and think about your mistakes!”

      As he lumbered off, it wasn’t personal blunders Axl was mulling over.

 

* * *

 

       While he’d never admit it, this wasn’t the first time he’d had his tongue frozen to a pipe. After that one snow day when Red had told him about what happens to humans that lick metal in cold weather, Axl had slunk off the first chance he could to test if the same happened to Reploids.

      Apparently yeah, Reploid tongues stuck as well as human tongues.

     Only that time, he’d been able to reach up a hand and simply pinch the tip of his tongue to detach it from the icy pole. The freeze damage wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t as bad as it would have been if he was human, and within two hours he didn’t even feel a twinge of pain.

     This was far worse. His whole tongue was dragged out and exposed to the freezing wind, and it had been stuck to the metal for so long that it was deeply cold-burned. One by one, the delicate taste nerves were snuffed out, while the pain sensors went off the scale. At this rate, he doubted he’d be able to taste anything for a month.

     On the plus side, he wasn’t going to overheat anytime soon. He tended to go on overload when he was stressed, which overheated his systems, which kinda made him hyperventilate, which made him look like a freak. Right now he was pretty stressed, but the cold air forced down his throat kept his systems nice and chilly even as every part of his body trembled with adrenaline.

       Axl tried to block out the distress of his body. All that mattered was getting a com signal out so he could wrap this disastrous mission up. He found a few scraps of history data that led him to a control bank linked to com data. Maybe this was what he’d been looking for. He sifted through it, trying to find an opening to the hands-free function. Yes! Yes! There! He willed the program into being and was relieved to hear a tiny click in his aural cones.   

      "Maverick Hunter HQ, Heliotropolis division. Come in, Axl. Over.” The message was full of static and frequently cut out, but he’d gotten through!

       “Thith ith Acthal! Uh…” Scrap, he’d forgotten. There was no way anybody could understand him like this. Axl frantically tried to remember how to turn on the text feature, but that was something he’d used even less after getting a cell phone. He tried again to speak around the freezing hunk that was his tongue. “Thend hep, pleeth! I’m thozen to the grouth, can’t mooth!” Yeah, good luck deciphering THAT. He sighed heavily in frustration.

      “I can’t understand you. Turn on text function, over.”

       “I CAN’T!”

      “Confirm, you can’t turn on text function. Are you damaged? Over.”

     “Ith compicated.” He still couldn’t admit about the whole tongue-frozen-to-pole thing. “I’m thtuck, tho thend hep, okay?”

      “Alright Axl, we have a lock on your position. Stand by, over.” He heard the navigator turn away from the screen, murmuring to someone else. “He’s at risk of freeze damage. Get somebody out there.”

      Another person replied “I’ve got Commander X on the line. He wants the co-ords.”

       Panic shot through Axl in beyond-freezing jolts. Anyone but X. “No! Waith! I…I can handle thith mythef! Ah cear, no need thor rethcue!” He yelled, hoping to dissuade them before

     “Commander X, you’re clear for teleport.”

      Before that, yeah.

      Axl groaned inwardly. All he could do now was wait for the inevitable.

 

* * *

 

      Two minutes later, Axl heard someone crunching through snow. That would be his unwanted rescue. Every step X took made the cold anxiety and embarrassment in Axl heavier and heavier.

         There was concern in X’s voice as he jogged over. “Axl!” Axl could just imagine how this looked. Usually, no matter how wrecked Axl was, he was standing up. To be prostrate on the ground, totally unresponsive on his first solo mission, would ramp X’s worried-mother-hen mood up by a thousand. This was gonna be anticlimactic, to say the least. Axl couldn’t decide if he wanted to close his eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening or just play it cool. Ack, ice puns. Maybe it was a sign. Okay, so he’d play it cool.

       “Hey, Ecth. Watthup?”

        X slowed down, perplexed. “What?”

       There was no way he could pull off a casual shrug while in this position, so he kept nervously rambling. “You good? I’m good. Juth chillin. Ha, get ith?”

       X crouched down beside him, assessing the damage, and his gaze landed on Axl's face. “Uh…wow. Wow.” The concern faded into barely veiled mirth, and Axl winced. “Uh, how…how’d this happen?” X asked, trying to keep a straight face.

        “Odin Mathtodon hath a thick thenthe of humor.” Annoyance washed over him and he snapped “How abouth getting me outh of here, huh?”

        “Cool down, Axl.” He just KNEW X said that on purpose. “Just stay still and I’ll thaw this out.” Axl heard X take out the emergency heat pad and start to turn it on. He paused.

        “Whah githes? Ecth?”

        X touched Axl’s back and he heard a slight rustle of paper. “What is this?”

       What was what? Axl didn’t know Mastodon had taped a paper to his back. At the rate this day was going, it probably said KICK ME.

        Finally, X folded the paper up and got to heating the ice off Axl, who really didn’t care all that much what the paper said at this point. He just wanted to get warm. Mostly he wanted to get his tongue back in his mouth. After a few minutes, Axl suggested “Hey, maybe you cud do my tongue firsh?”

        “You’re going to get some serious freeze damage on your legs and arms if I don’t do them right away,” X replied calmly. Too calmly. Another minute passed and Axl could move his legs, but he was getting a terrible suspicion. “Really, Ecth, juth do my tongue, pleathe.”

    “I’ll get to it soon.”

    Axl couldn’t contain his suspicion. “You’re enjoying thith, aren’t you?!”

   “Why Axl!” He sounded too innocent, bordering sarcasm. “That’s not very ‘ice’ of you to accuse me of something like that.”

    “You are! I knew ith, YOU ARE!” He exploded, taking advantage of his freed legs to try and wriggle out of the icy shackles. “Thath…noth…funny! Juth teleport uth back now!”

     X may have limitless potential, but he had a lousy poker face. He managed to get a response out, but just barely. "I would, but this is such an ICE-olated area that we'd never get through..." He collapsed into helpless laughter as Axl growled with rage.

 

* * *

 

       It was four minutes before X got around to detaching Axl's tongue from the pole. And he hadn't stopped chuckling once.

      As Axl stood and stretched his cramped limbs, cradling his stiff and painful tongue carefully behind his teeth, he glared at X. "You're horrible." He grumbled slowly. It was still difficult to talk. He hoped the damage to his mouth wasn't permanent. Being the first rookie Hunter to need a tongue replacement was something he could never live down.

      X waved him over to teleport range. "Let's get that wing looked at and then you can make a report."

      Axl reluctantly followed, dragging his feet in the snow.

     

  He only hoped X didn't plan on telling Zero about all this.

**Author's Note:**

> That night, Axl caught X as soon as he got off duty. "Hey, X. What did that paper say, anyways?" 
> 
> "Huh?" X thought it over, and then nodded as understanding came over his expression. "Oh, that. It was a project permit."
> 
> "A project permit?"
> 
> "Yes, for the outpost that Odin Mastodon worked at. They're testing frequencies that could affect weather patterns. That  
> was the signal we'd been getting." X shrugged. "Someone called it in as an interference signal, might have been because of their own equipment reading it wrong. Still, we can't be too careful."
> 
> "Right." Axl knew he was supposed to be glad that there wasn't a Maverick at the base, like X was, but...
> 
> As he left X to go get some sleep, he felt the itch of unfinished business.
> 
> And his tongue STILL hurt!
> 
>  
> 
> (One night I thought "What if Axl got his tongue stuck to a frozen pipe? And then this happened.)


End file.
